Functional Agnostics
An agnostic is one who is not sure about the existence of God. So goes the definition. I was struck the other day in speaking of some of my own personal experiences that many of us are in reality "functional agnostics" even though we may "say" differently.

Let me explain. I believe that a functional agnostic is unsure about how or why God would work in their life. They have this block about the work of God, not the existence of God. Deism, the form of Christianity that some of our American Founding Fathers practiced, believed fully in the existence of God. He made all that it as an old clockmaker, wound the springs and set it moving. Beyond that the action of God was unnecessary. It was all up to us. That is functional agnosticism because it moves God away from the center and replaces his actions and movements with the possibility of ours.

In other words, God has no active place in our lives. God "did." He doesn't "do." The result is a lack of connection with God. It leads to hopelessness when things don't go the way we think we are able to make them go. Or it leads to more pressure, power, violence to make it happen. If God is not a participant in the daily activities of His creation and cares about the lives that we lead, God is not God any longer. He may have been the Creator, but he is not a Higher Power that can bring about salvation or any other thing of substance.

We humans, I am afraid, fall easily into this functional agnosticism. It is the natural extension of that high mythic moment explained in Genesis with the serpent and the couple in the Garden of Eden. Their sin- what we often call Original Sin- is still our basic sin and the source of our Sinfulness. We seek to replace the Higher Power of God with our own power and wisdom and desires. We seek to be like God. It never works. It is our classic insanity… millennia of humans trying the same things over and over expecting that this time… this time we will get a different result.

Sure God uses us and others. Sure God wants us to use the power and wisdom and desires we have been given to help ourselves. But not without first looking to him for the power to do more than we can, the wisdom to know what it is we can do, and the desire to live a life guided by Him and not us. Thank God for being God- and I'm not. Amen.